New research from the University of Auckland shows the risk of brain tumours cannot be linked with with increased mobile phone use.

Professor Mark Elwood, cancer epidemiologist at the University of Auckland, led research on the trends in primary brain incidence in New Zealand between 1995 and 2010. Results indicate there is no general increase in brain tumours as a consequence of using mobile phones.

Elwoodâ€™s team examined the frequency (yearly incidence) of brain cancers, both in total and in sub-types highlighted in some other studies, in New Zealand from 1995 to 2010 using data from the New Zealand national cancer registry. Â Read more »

I noticed this article in this morning’s Stuff.co.nz detailing a lightÂ aircraft crash in the USA where the cause is thought to be the pilot
taking ‘selfies’.

A pilot who lost control while taking selfies was likely the cause of a small plane crash that killed two men this past spring, according to US federal investigators.

Pilot Amritpal Singh, 29, and his passenger were killed instantly when Singh’s Cessna 150K crashed into a wheat field shortly after midnight May 31. The wreckage was discovered around 7am local time that morning.

A GoPro camera mounted to the plane’s windshield recorded Singh and several other passengers taking selfies on their mobile phones during a series of short flights before the crash, the US National Transportation Safety Board found. While the GoPro didn’t record the flight where Singh crashed, investigators portrayed a pattern of the pilot taking selfies and possibly texting while giving rides to passengers above Front Range Airport, about 40 kilometres east of Denver.

“During the climb-out portion of flight, the pilot uses his mobile phone to take a self photograph. The camera’s flash was activated and illuminated the cockpit area,” NTSB investigators reported. “During the climb-out phase, the pilot was seen making keyboard entries to his cell phone and additional keyboard entries on a portion of flight consistent with the downwind leg.”

Singh landed safely after that flight, picked up another passenger, and took off again, crashing a few minutes later.

This is a story in the World section and actually occurred in the United States, and involves a specific aircraft…a Cessna 150K.

French prison has become a â€śholiday campâ€ť, guards have warned, after inmates posted more than 100 selfies on Facebook showing them posing with wads of cash, dope and mobile phones.

Two investigations have been launched this week into how the photographs and video clips featuring the inmates of Baumettes prison near Marseille, southern France, reached the social media website, and how the objects got through security.

In one image, a prisoner in Y-fronts waves around a large bundle of 50 euro notes; another photo shows an inmate smoking a hookah and playing with a mobile phone while another shows cannabis on a table in the prison.

A fourth shows a group of muscular, bare-chested inmates in the prison courtyard posing as if in a boyâ€™s band. According to La Provence, the local newspaper that broke the story, photos of knives also exist.

The Facebook page entitled â€śMDR o Baumettesâ€ť (LOL in the Baumettes) had garnered almost 5,000 likes in the past few weeks before it was closed down after prison staff stumbled on the page over New Year.

While it may have won fans on social media, the Facebook page sparked concern among prison authorities, who launched an internal probe while also filing a criminal complaint.

â€śWe took immediate action after discovering this page by opening an investigation and informing the prosecutors in Marseille,â€ť said Philippe Perron, the local prisons administrative chief.

Guards conducted a search of five cells identified on Facebook, confiscating three mobiles and a USB key. Several inmates featuring in the photos face disciplinary action.

I might have some sympathy with Hipkins’ claims if he would open up theÂ communicationsÂ costs for Labour MPs. Yet again we see why theÂ ParliamentaryÂ Services expenditure must be opened up to the OIA.

David Shearer thinks we should be more like Finland…there are some appealing aspects to this…the hot chicks…the naked beer runs…and top rifles they make…but it isn’t all good news out of Finland:

Samsung Electronics has ended Nokia’s 14-year leadership of the global mobile phone market in the first quarter of the year, outselling the struggling Finnish handset maker for the first time ever, according to a Reuters poll of analysts.

The poll showed analysts on average expect Samsung to have sold 88 million mobile phones in January through March, surpassing the 83 million which Nokia sold in the quarter.

Nokia had announced the sales total on Wednesday when it warned of losses from the phones business in the first and second quarter. Samsung is due to release quarterly numbers on April 27.

Nokia has struggled for several years in the smartphone race, but its dominance in the lower end of the market has allowed it to keep its rank as the world’s largest mobile maker by volume.

The fall of the Finnish firm has been rapid over the last few months as in a similar poll in January it was still expected to stay far ahead of Samsung.

“After 14 years as the largest global mobile phone maker, getting knocked off the top spot will come as a bitter blow to Nokia,” said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight, who has followed the industry since the 1990s.

“In contrast it will be greeted with euphoria by Samsung – they’ll be dancing from the boardroom to the factory floor,” Wood said.

A few years back all the cool kids had a Blackberry…they were so popular and addictive they were even nicknamed Crackberrys.

However now when people pull out a Blackberry those of us with iPhones look down on them with pity….sometimes you can even hear the pity…ahhh…ohhh. Likewise RIM’s stock has dropped and the company is now an also ran in the handset market. Basically they fell off a cliff:

I think there are three factors that help create The Cliff. First, there is the replacement cycle. The average replacement cycle for mobile phones in year 2000 was 21 months. By year 2006 it was down to 18 months. Today it is 16 months (all handsets). For smartphones it is even faster, at 11.5 months. A car is replaced something like every 3 or 4 years on average. A TV set once every 7 years. A personal computer every 3 and a half years. But mobile phones are replaced every year and a half, smartphones replaced every year (on average).

So if you have a bad model car, and your sales suffers because of it, you will not lose all your loyal customers in a year or two, because many of your customers have last year’s model and are happy with it, and will not even come to your car dealership until two years from now to consider the replacement model, by which time you have had plenty of time to fix the problems with your current car model.

In mobile phones we do not have that luxury. The pace is so fast. And note that the rate of the collapse due to The Cliff is actually accelerating. This also suggests the replacement cycle and The Cliff are related.

The tyranny of the out-of-hours email from the boss has plagued workers the world over ever since the introduction of the BlackBerry.

Now, after years of subjugation, one group of workers has struck a blow for freedom: 1000 employees of the German car giant Volkswagen.

In a move designed to restore the sacred Teutonic concept of “feierabend” – strictly no work out of factory hours – the vehicle maker’s works council, backed by its most powerful trade union, this year struck an agreement with the company that from now on email will be disabled for the selected BlackBerry-equipped staff when they are not in the office.

These employees now receive emails only from half an hour before the start of working hours and half an hour after they end. They can still receive and make phone calls.

Hans-Joachim Thust, a workers’ spokesman, suggested that mobile phones and BlackBerry handsets could disrupt family life and lead to employee burn-out. “The new possibilities of communication also contain inherent dangers.”

Volkswagen staff were said to have become fed up with being treated as if they were permanently available to their bosses. There were reports of employees having romantic evenings or a relaxing bath disrupted by infuriating management messages.

As is usual from a race of people who don’t even have a word for fluffy, they have over engineered the solution. Why couldn’t these cunning German workers simply have turned off the phone?

So what does the PlayBook have to offer? It turns out, quite a lot. Featuring a 7â€ł screen (much like the newSamsung Galaxy Tab), the PlayBook sports a 1Ghz dual-core processor, has 1GB of RAM, and touts the ability to multi-task and run Flash 10.1.

To a large extent, the PlayBook looks like itâ€™s a showcase of RIMâ€™sÂ acquisition of QNX. QNX Neutrino is the base of the new OS.

RIM is selling this as the first â€śenterprise-readyâ€ť professional tablet.